Neurocognitive mechanisms of emotional interference in native and foreign languages: evidence from proficient bilinguals.

Currently available data show mixed results as to whether the processing of emotional information has the same characteristics in the native (L1) as in the second language (L2) of bilinguals. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to shed light on the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying bilinguals' emotional processing in L1 and L2 during an emotional interference task (i.e., the Emotional Stroop Task - EST). Our sample comprised proficient Italian-English bilinguals who learned their L2 during childhood mainly in instructional rather than immersive contexts. In spite of no detectable behavioural effects, we found stronger brain activations for L1 versus L2 emotional words in sectors of the posteromedial cortex involved in attention modulation, episodic memory, and affective processing. While fMRI findings are consistent with the hypothesis of a stronger emotional resonance when processing words in a native language, our overall pattern of results points to the different sensitivity of behavioural and hemodynamic responses to emotional information in the two languages of bilingual speakers.

Distinct functional connectivity patterns during naturalistic learning by adolescent first versus second language speakers.

Spoken lessons (lectures) are commonly used in schools as a medium for conveying educational content. In adolescence, experience-expectant maturation of language and cognitive systems supports learning; however, little is known about whether or how learners' language experiences interact with this integration process during learning. We examined functional connectivity using fMRI in 38 Spanish-English bilingual (L1-Spanish) and English monolingual (L1-English) adolescents during a naturalistic science video lesson in English. Seed analyses including the left inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis) and posterior middle temporal gyrus showed that L1-Spanish adolescents, when learning in their second language (L2), displayed widespread bilateral functional connectivity throughout the cortex while L1-English adolescents displayed mostly left-lateralized connectivity with core language regions over the course of the science lesson. Furthermore, we identified functional seed connectivity associated with better learning outcomes for adolescents with diverse language backgrounds. Importantly, functional connectivity patterns in L1-Spanish adolescents while learning in English also correlate with their Spanish cloze reading. Findings suggest that functional networks associated with higher-order language processing and cognitive control are differentially engaged for L1 vs. L2 speakers while learning new information through spoken language.

Grammatical gender in spoken word recognition in school-age Spanish monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children.

This study examined grammatical gender processing in school-aged children with varying levels of cumulative English exposure. Children participated in a visual world paradigm with a four-picture display where they heard a gendered article followed by a target noun and were in the context where all images were the same gender (same gender), where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender than the target noun (different gender), and where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender, but there was a mismatch in the gendered article and target noun pair. We investigated 51 children (aged 5;0-10;0) who were exposed to Spanish since infancy but varied in their amount of cumulative English exposure. In addition to the visual word paradigm, all children completed an article-noun naming task, a grammaticality judgment task, and standardized vocabulary tests. Parents reported on their child's cumulative English language exposure and current English language use. To investigate the time course of lexical facilitation effects, looks to the target were analyzed with a cluster-based permutation test. The results revealed that all children used gender in a facilitatory way (during the noun region), and comprehension was significantly inhibited when the article-noun pairing was ungrammatical rather than grammatical. Compared to children with less cumulative English exposure, children with more cumulative English exposure looked at the target noun significantly less often overall, and compared to younger children, older children looked at the target noun significantly more often overall. Additionally, children with lower cumulative English exposure looked at target nouns more in the different-gender condition than the same-gender condition for masculine items more than feminine items.

Dynamic assessment of phonological awareness in monolingual and bilingual French-speaking children.

Dynamic assessment (DA) is a tool used to assess children's learning potential. Research on English-speaking children indicates that DA effectively diagnoses language disorders in monolingual and bilingual children. However, few DAs have been developed for French-speaking children. This study aimed to examine the validity of a dynamic phonological awareness task for differentiating French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Thirty-eight monolingual and bilingual children, aged 4-8 years, 23 with typical development (TD) and 15 with DLD, participated in the study. They performed a dynamic phoneme segmentation task, in which graduated cues were provided. Children were also administered a nonword repetition (NWR) task, and a modifiability scale, in which the examiner rated the child's responsivity during the task. Statistical analyses examined what factors influenced dynamic task performance, and calculated the sensitivity and specificity of the tests. Results indicated that four factors emerged as significant in a mixed-effects logistic regression model: age, diagnostic group (TD vs. DLD), modifiability, and the number of phonemes in the target word. Older children who had TD and higher modifiability scores had better segmentation skills than other children. Words with fewer phonemes were also easier to segment than words with greater numbers of phonemes. The dynamic task had good sensitivity in the identification of DLD but less good specificity. Our findings indicate that a dynamic task of phonological awareness has the potential to be used as a diagnostic tool to differentiate TD and DLD.

Parent-led Communication Therapy for Young Bilingual Autistic Children: A Scoping Review.

A scoping review of the literature was undertaken using JBI guidelines to map the evidence of parent-led therapy (PLT) for young autistic children (≤ 6 years) raised in bilingual environments. Reviewers used Covidence to screen located sources. Sixteen papers met inclusion criteria. A strong acceleration of reports of PLT for young autistic children measured in bilingual environments was observed, with 93.8% of papers (n = 15) published since 2015. Reporting of participants' language environments (home language(s)/L1s and societal language(s)/L2s) was inconsistent. A large majority of these studies, 87.5% (n = 14) were conducted in North America or in collaboration with a North American institution. Diverse PLT programs and methodologies were identified. There is variation in demographic information collected and outcomes reported. Evidence gaps in the literature are identified and the value of undertaking systematic review on this topic is considered. This scoping review points to the necessity of further empirical research and practice that centres parents in early and specific support for autistic children raised in bilingual environments. Suggestions for improving reporting standards of language profiles are provided.

Daily and Ethnic Discriminatory Experiences and Cognitive Control in Mexican-Origin Bilingual Language Brokers.

Few studies have considered bilingualism's impact on cognitive development within the sociolinguistic and cultural context of the immigrant communities where bilingualism is commonly practiced. In the United States, many Mexican-origin bilingual youth practice their bilingual skills by brokering (i.e., translating/interpreting between languages) for their immigrant parents who have low English proficiency. Meanwhile, these youth may also experience discrimination in their daily life. The present study focuses on Mexican-origin bilingual youth brokers (N=334) in order to examine how discriminatory experiences (i.e., daily and ethnic discrimination) and bilingual brokering experiences captured by profiles are related to cognitive control performance (i.e., attentional control and inhibition). We found no significant direct influence of either bilingual broker profiles or discriminatory experiences on cognitive control. However, the associations between discriminatory experiences and cognitive control performance depended upon brokering experiences. Specifically, greater discrimination was associated with lower cognitive control performance among moderate brokers (with moderate bilingual experiences), but the association was attenuated among efficacious brokers (with positive bilingual experiences). Findings highlight the need to consider the sociolinguistic heterogeneity of both discriminatory experiences and language use when investigating cognitive control performance in bilinguals.

Brain correlates of attentional load processing reflect degree of bilingual engagement: Evidence from EEG.

The present study uses electroencephalography (EEG) with an N-back task (0-, 1-, and 2-back) to investigate if and how individual bilingual experiences modulate brain activity and cognitive processes. The N-back is an especially appropriate task given recent proposals situating bilingual effects on neurocognition within the broader attentional control system (Bialystok and Craik, 2022). Beyond its working memory component, the N-Back task builds in complexity incrementally, progressively taxing the attentional system. EEG, behavioral and language/social background data were collected from 60 bilinguals. Two cognitive loads were calculated: low (1-back minus 0-back) and high (2-back minus 0-back). Behavioral performance and brain recruitment were modeled as a function of individual differences in bilingual engagement. We predicted task performance as modulated by bilingual engagement would reflect cognitive demands of increased complexity: slower reaction times and lower accuracy, and increase in theta, decrease in alpha and modulated N2/P3 amplitudes. The data show no modulation of the expected behavioral effects by degree of bilingual engagement. However, individual differences analyses reveal significant correlations between non-societal language use in Social contexts and alpha in the low cognitive load condition and age of acquisition of the L2/2L1 with theta in the high cognitive load. These findings lend some initial support to Bialystok and Craik (2022), showing how certain adaptations at the brain level take place in order to deal with the cognitive demands associated with variations in bilingual language experience and increases in attentional load. Furthermore, the present data highlight how these effects can play out differentially depending on cognitive testing/modalities - that is, effects were found at the TFR level but not behaviorally or in the ERPs, showing how the choice of analysis can be deterministic when investigating bilingual effects.

Developmental changes in the word co-occurrences of Spanish-English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder.

PURPOSE: The study aimed to understand how bilingual children with typical language development (TLD) and those with developmental language disorder (DLD) use frequent word co-occurrences in their narratives. METHOD: We studied the change over time in the word co-occurrences used by 30 Spanish-English bilingual children with and without DLD (experimental group). An additional normative group consisted of 98 TLD Spanish-English bilingual first graders. Children narrated two Spanish and two English stories in kindergarten and first grade. Employing a Python program on the transcribed narratives, we extracted all adjacent two-word and three-word co-occurrences. From the normative group, the 90 most frequently occurring two-word and 90 most frequently occurring three-word co-occurrences were extracted. The type and tokens of word co-occurrences each child in the experimental group produced out of the 180 identified word co-occurrences were analysed. RESULT: Overall, children at first grade produced more word co-occurrences types than in kindergarten. Children with DLD used fewer types of word co-occurrences but produced them as often as than their TLD peers. Children with DLD increased their word co-occurrences from kindergarten to first grade at the same rate although at a lower frequency. Children in both groups produced similar types and tokens of word co-occurrences in both Spanish and English, except tokens of two word co-occurrences. Children produced two word co-occurrences more often in English than in their Spanish narratives. CONCLUSION: The results shed light on children with DLD's deficits in production of word co-occurrences, indirectly reflecting possible deficits in statistical pattern detection.

EXPRESS: Speaker Variability, But Not Bilingualism, Influences Cross-Situational Word Learning.

When learning new words, listeners must contend with multiple sources of ambiguity and variability. Research has revealed that learners can resolve referential ambiguity by tracking co-occurrence statistics between words and their referents across multiple exposures over time - a process termed cross-situational word learning (XSWL). However, the degree to which variability in the input, such as input from multiple speakers, and variability in learner experience, such as bilingual language experience, modulate XSWL remain unclear. In the present study, we examined the effects of speaker variability in cross-situational word learning performance in monolingual adults and bilingual adults with a range of second language backgrounds and language acquisition histories. Results revealed above-chance word learning in both the single and the multiple speaker conditions across language groups. An advantage for word learning was observed in the single speaker condition but the effects of bilingual language experience were null. This research adds to the limited body of work dedicated to extending theories of statistical learning to account for variations in both input and learner characteristics as well as their interactions.

Bilingualism modifies cognition through adaptation, not transfer.

The standard explanation for bilingual effects on cognition is that an aspect of language processing transfers to nonverbal cognitive performance, leading to improvements in executive functioning. However, much evidence is incompatible with that view, and transfer across those domains seems unlikely. The present argument is that bilingual experience modifies cognition through an adaptation to the underlying attention system, making attention more efficient. 'Transfer' focuses on the overlap of specific processes, so task similarity predicts outcomes. By contrast, 'adaptation' focuses on recruitment of the modified resource, so the degree of attention required predicts outcome. In this view, bilinguals require less attentional effort than monolinguals for similar levels of performance, and outperform monolinguals on tasks with high attention demands regardless of task similarity.

EXPRESS: The cross-script cognate effect in spoken and written second language production: A study based on Chinese-English bilinguals.

Previous studies using cognates with the same writing system have found cognate facilitation effect in the lexical processes of spoken and typewritten productions and cognate interference effect in the sub-lexical process of typewritten production. This study focused on cross-script cognates, Chinese-English, which have different writing systems, and explored cognate effects based on the input and output modalities by using a Chinese-English translation task. Experiment 1 was under visual input modality and investigated the cross-script cognate effect in all three output modalities: spoken, typewritten, and handwritten. Results revealed a cognate facilitation effect in the lexical processes across all three output modalities. However, a cognate facilitation effect rather than a cognate interference effect in the sub-lexical process of typewritten production. Experiment 2 was under auditory input modality and focused on exploring cross-script cognate effect on typewritten and handwritten modalities, finding a consistent result on cognate effects with Experiment 1. Both experiments showed higher accuracy for cognates and there was no significant difference in cognate effect between visual and auditory inputs. In summary, these findings indicated that the use of cross-script cognates could effectively mitigate cognate interference. While spoken, handwritten, and typewritten production share lexical processes, differences emerge in sub-lexical processes, with spoken production being less influenced by orthography. Furthermore, combining the results of Experiments 1 and 2, typewritten production may lean towards the phonological route while handwritten production may favor the direct lexical-orthographic route in the sub-lexical processes.

Beyond age: exploring ultimate attainment in heritage speakers and late L2 learners.

According to the Critical Period Hypothesis, successful language learning is optimal during early childhood, whereas language learning outside of this time window is unsuccessful. In this respect, early language acquisition is viewed as convergent and reliable but late acquisition is not. The present study revisits the idea of a critical period by investigating the grammatical attainment of early bilinguals/heritage speakers (HSs), late second/foreign language (L2) learners, and comparable groups of monolinguals by testing Greek-English bilinguals in the two languages they speak by means of a grammaticality judgment task. Our findings show that in English, HSs performed on par with monolinguals, both groups surpassing the late L2 learners, who performed about 2 SDs below the HSs and the monolinguals. In Greek, late L2 learners and monolinguals exhibited comparable performance, contrasting sharply with the HSs' significantly lower proficiency, which was on average about 5 SDs below the late L2 learners and the monolinguals. Consequently, our results show that the performance gaps between HSs and Greek monolinguals/late L2 learners were more pronounced than the differences between late L2 learners and English monolinguals/HSs, suggesting that the early bilinguals' success in English may come at the expense of their heritage language (Greek). Furthermore, we observe substantially more individual variation within HSs in their heritage language than within the late L2 learners for their second language. Thus, testing bilinguals in both of their languages allows us to unveil the complexity of grammatical ultimate attainment and prompt a re-thinking of age as the major determining factor of (un)successful attainment.

Bilingualism and second-order theory of mind development in autistic children over time: Longitudinal relations with language, executive functions, and intelligence.

Theory of Mind has long been studied as a core weakness in autism spectrum disorder due to its relationship with social reciprocity, while bilingualism has been shown to compensate for autistic individuals' mentalizing weaknesses. However, our knowledge of the Theory of Mind developmental trajectories of bilingual and monolingual autistic children, as well as of the factors related to Theory of Mind development in autism spectrum disorder is still limited. The current study has examined first- and second-order Theory of Mind skills in 21 monolingual and 21 bilingual autistic children longitudinally across three time points, specifically at ages 6, 9, and 12, and also investigated associations between Theory of Mind trajectories and trajectories of the children's language, intelligence and executive function skills. The results reveal that bilingual autistic children outperformed their monolingual peers in second-order Theory of Mind at ages 9 and 12, and that intelligence and, especially, expressive vocabulary skills played a pivotal role in advancing bilingual autistic children's second-order Theory of Mind development. On the other hand, monolingual autistic children only managed to capitalize on their language and intelligence resources at age 12. The findings highlight the importance of investigating bilingualism effects on autistic children's advanced cognitive abilities longitudinally.

Enhanced pitch discrimination in autistic children with unexpected bilingualism.

Some autistic children acquire foreign languages from exposure to screens. Such unexpected bilingualism (UB) is therefore not driven by social interaction, rather, language acquisition appears to rely on less socially mediated learning and other cognitive processes. We hypothesize that UB children may rely on other cues, such as acoustic cues, of the linguistic input. Previous research indicates enhanced pitch processing in some autistic children, often associated with language delays and difficulties in forming stable phonological categories due to sensitivity to subtle linguistic variations. We propose that repetitive screen-based input simplifies linguistic complexity, allowing focus on individual cues. This study hypothesizes that autistic UB children exhibit superior pitch discrimination compared with both autistic and non-autistic peers. From a sample of 46 autistic French-speaking children aged 9 to 16, 12 were considered as UB. These children, along with 45 non-autistic children, participated in a two-alternative forced-choice pitch discrimination task. They listened to pairs of pure tones, 50% of which differed by 3% (easy), 2% (medium), or 1% (hard). A stringent comparison of performance revealed that only the autistic UB group performed above chance for tone pairs that differed, across all conditions. This group demonstrated superior pitch discrimination relative to autistic and non-autistic peers. This study establishes the phenomenon of UB in autism and provides evidence for enhanced pitch discrimination in this group. Acute perception of auditory information, combined with repeated language content, may facilitate UB children's focus on phonetic features, and help acquire a language with no communicative support or motivation.

Early language experience and modality affect parietal cortex activation in different hemispheres: Insights from hearing bimodal bilinguals.

The goal of this study was to investigate the impact of the age of acquisition (AoA) on functional brain representations of sign language in two exceptional groups of hearing bimodal bilinguals: native signers (simultaneous bilinguals since early childhood) and late signers (proficient sequential bilinguals, who learnt a sign language after puberty). We asked whether effects of AoA would be present across languages - signed and audiovisual spoken - and thus observed only in late signers as they acquired each language at different life stages, and whether effects of AoA would be present during sign language processing across groups. Moreover, we aimed to carefully control participants' level of sign language proficiency by implementing a battery of language tests developed for the purpose of the project, which confirmed that participants had high competences of sign language. Between-group analyses revealed a hypothesized modulatory effect of AoA in the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in native signers, compared to late signers. With respect to within-group differences across languages we observed greater involvement of the left IPL in response to sign language in comparison to spoken language in both native and late signers, suggesting language modality effects. Overall, our results suggest that the neural underpinnings of language are molded by the linguistic characteristics of the language as well as by when in life the language is learnt.

Working Memory Capacity and Contextual Novel Linguistic Input: A Cross-Modal Priming Study on Persian-English Subordinate Bilinguals.

The present study investigated the effect of verbal working memory capacity (VWMC) on the processing of semantic information during on-line lexical ambiguity resolution of bilinguals. Seventeen Persian-English subordinate bilinguals of similar proficiency level were recruited to perform two experimental tasks: (1) a multi-load-level reading span task designed to measure their VWMC and (2) a cross-modal semantic priming task (CMPT), 24 h subsequent to the last encoding session, to assess their performance on semantic processing of L2 homographs whose subordinate readings were deemed "novel" for them. An overall 2 × 3 repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference in the processing of the encoded semantic information between high and low WMC participants. The findings of the experiments lend support to the veracity of the assumptions made by Reordered Access Model in that biasing semantic context facilitates the ambiguity resolution of lexical items. Lastly, the pedagogical implications of the findings were expounded on.

Operating in a second language lowers cognitive interference during creative idea generation: Evidence from brain oscillations in bilinguals.

Tasks measuring human creativity overwhelmingly rely on both language comprehension and production. Although most of the world's population is bilingual, few studies have investigated the effects of language of operation on creative output. This is surprising given that fluent bilinguals master inhibitory control, a mechanism also at play in creative idea evaluation. Here, we compared creative output in the two languages of Polish(L1)-English(L2) bilinguals engaged in a cyclic adaptation of the Alternative Uses Task increasing the contribution of idea evaluation (convergent thinking). We show that Polish-English bilinguals suffer less cognitive interference when generating unusual uses for common objects in the L2 than the L1, without incurring a significant drop in idea originality. Right posterior alpha oscillation power, known to reflect creative thinking, increased over cycles. This effect paralleled the increase in originality ratings over cycles, and lower alpha power (8-10 Hz) was significantly greater in the L1 than the L2. Unexpectedly, we found greater beta (16.5-28 Hz) desynchronization in the L2 than the L1, suggesting that bilingual participants suffered less interference from competing mental representations when performing the task in the L2. Whereas creative output seems unaffected by language of operation overall, the drop in beta power in the L2 suggests that bilinguals are not subjected to the same level of semantic flooding in the second language as they naturally experience in their native language.

Revisiting which language declines more in Spanish-English bilinguals with Alzheimer's disease: Longitudinal decline patterns on the multilingual naming test.

Theories of bilingual language production predict that bilinguals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) should exhibit one of two decline patterns. Either parallel decline of both languages (if decline reflects damage to semantic representations that are accessed by both languages), or asymmetrical decline, with greater decline of the nondominant language (if decline reflects reduced ability to resolve competition from the dominant language with disease progression). Only two previous studies examined decline longitudinally with one showing parallel, and the other asymmetrical, decline. We examined decline over 2-7 years (3.9 on average) in Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 23). Logistic regression revealed a parallel decline pattern at one year from baseline, but an asymmetrical decline pattern over the longer decline period, with greater decline of the nondominant language (when calculating predicted probabilities of a correct response). The asymmetrical decline pattern was significantly greater for the nondominant language only when including item-difficulty in the model. Exploratory analyses across dominance groups looking at proportional decline relative to initial naming accuracy further suggested that decline of the nondominant language may be more precipitous if that language was acquired later in life, but the critical interaction needed to support this possibility was not statistically significant in a logistic regression analysis. These results suggest that accessibility of the nondominant language may initially be more resilient in early versus more advanced AD, and that AD affects shared semantic representations before executive control declines to a point where the ability to name pictures in single-language testing block is disrupted. Additional work is needed to determine if asymmetrical decline patterns are magnified by late age of acquisition of the nondominant language, and if more subtle impairments to executive control underlie impairments to language switching that occur in the earliest stages of AD (even preclinically).

Exploring the Production Effect in Memory Reveals a Balanced Bilingual Advantage.

There is evidence suggesting that bilingual individuals demonstrate an advantage over monolinguals in performing various tasks related to memory and executive functions. The characteristics of this bilingual advantage are not unanimously agreed upon in the literature, and some even doubt it exists. The heterogeneity of the bilingual population may explain this inconsistency. Hence, it is important to identify different subgroups of bilinguals and characterize their cognitive performance. The current study focuses on the production effect, a well-established memory phenomenon, in bilingual young adults differing in their English and Hebrew proficiency levels, and the possible balanced bilingual advantage. The aims of this study are (1) to evaluate the production effect in three groups of bilingual participants: English-dominant bilinguals, Hebrew-dominant bilinguals, and balanced bilinguals, and (2) to examine whether memory advantage depends on varying degrees of bilingualism. One hundred twenty-one bilingual young adults who speak English and Hebrew at different levels participated. All learned lists of familiar words, in English and Hebrew, half by reading aloud and half by silent reading, followed by free recall tests. As expected, a production effect (better memory for aloud words than for silent words) was found for all groups in both languages. Balanced bilinguals remembered more words than did dominant participants, demonstrating a memory advantage in both languages. These findings support the hypothesis that the presence of cognitive advantage in bilingualism depends on the acquisition of a good proficiency level in each of the languages, with direct implications for family language policy and bilingual education.

False memories in bilinguals: Integration of information across languages and limits on proficiency effects.

Research on false memory in bilinguals using the DRM task has shown that false memories transfer across languages, but comparisons to within-language conditions have yielded mixed results. In two experiments, Spanish-English bilinguals completed standardized language assessments and a DRM task. Experiment 1 (N = 96) had several study-recall cycles before a final recognition test, and Experiment 2 (N = 72) only tested recognition. Relative to within-language conditions, more critical lures were recalled when the language changed from study to test and when words were studied in mixed-language sequences. With no prior recall test, the rate of critical lure recognition did not differ across language conditions. Language proficiency was not associated with the false-memory effects. Associations of false and veridical memory were negative in recall and positive in recognition. Overall, the findings indicate that proficient bilinguals can integrate information across their languages via a shared semantic network to form false memories.